Tag Archives: postaweek

Sometimes a Punch in the Jugular Is the Best Medicine

28 Mar

I swore at some little kids the other night.

I don’t know how little they were, per se.  They were littler than me.  Adolescents, I suppose, is the technical term.   All I know is they were scrappy, yippy things and offended almost all of my sensory organs and so I dub them little kids.  Rascals.  Hellions.  Forged of muck, mire, and obscenities.

Granted, I’d willingly ventured into their pit of idiocy when I made my way out to the midnight showing of The Hunger Games.

Don’t judge me unless you’ve read the books.  Seriously, just don’t even start.  I’ll brawl.  Don’t think I won’t.

Anyway, I took the plunge into the hysteria about a week ago and openly admitted it in last Wednesday’s post.  My entire life was consumed with angst and every moment of exertion became just another thing I had to do before I could read again.   Since this led to devouring all three books in just a few days, I figured why not go ahead  see the movie.   I wouldn’t let Dave see it before he’s read the books and since I took the following day off work, I bought what I’m sure was the last ticket for the midnight showing in a 30-mile radius and ventured out into the wilderness of excited adolescents.   Alone.

I don’t really know why I go to the movies anymore.  I honestly can’t remember the last time I truly enjoyed it.   I suppose there’s that time I took myself on a date for a Lollipop Tuesday last year, but it’s important to note that in that scenario, I was the only one in the entire theater.  Maybe that’s key: I absolutely cannot have any other humans around me.  When I do have humans around me, I contemplate murder.

I think it’s safe to say that out of my myriad of pet peeves in this world, the one I hold near and dear to my heart is being rude during movies.   I don’t really know who the target audience is for those commercials that happen before the previews in the movie theater.  You know, the ones that feature some audience member being rude and ridiculous?  There’s the one of Steve Martin’s cell phone vibrating him off the seat.  There’s the one where people are watching The Notebook but all the dialogue is replaced with a story about puke, courtesy of the people having a conversation beside you.  I thought the target audience was the people who do those things, but those people still exist so I don’t know if it’s an effective campaign.  Oh, and there’s the one of the Lorax that played the evening I was trying to watch the Hunger Games, but unfortunately my offenders entered too late to notice it.  Maybe that’s the problem: rude people enter too late to see them.

To my surprise, I had secured a seat in front of an exit row, with plenty of leg room.  I had a big blank section to my left where no seats were installed in the event that wheelchairs were needed there, and had only one seat to my right, which no one had ventured to sit in, despite the fact that I had bathed that morning.  For the first time in a long while, I thought I might actually enjoy being at the movies – and one of the most anticipated movies in a very long time, even! A midnight showing! The luck!!

That’s when the gaggle appeared.

Just before the previews, when the lights were beginning to dim and the audience was settling into silence, a squadron of chirping adolescents piled up at the entrance to the theater.  Realizing that they were complete morons to have gone to the concession stand before scoping out seats, they found themselves unable to acquire fifteen seats all together and refused to watch this much-anticipated theatrical event in separation.  As they tried to balance their 6 dollar sodas and popcorns, they looked to the leader for orders.  That’s when she marched right over to the open (and chair-less) section to my left, and plopped down cross-legged on the floor.  Her minions followed suit, stacking into two rows in which they rested on each others’ limbs, greased with popcorn butter and reeking of trouble.

I almost immediately went to management.  Are you serious?! I went from having an almost guaranteed enjoyable evening to being the only person in the theater that has to directly deal with this group of doofuses.  I don’t even enjoy the movies when there’s only one seat beside me and now I’ve exchanged that one seat for 7.5 humans sitting on 7.5 other humans.  It was obvious to me that halfway through the movie they would get sore or tired of laying on each other and need to shift around.  Not to mention the chomping and slurping and chatting.  Oh, the chatting.  

But I told myself that it would be a great memory for them.  They could look back and reminisce about the midnight showing of the Hunger Games, when they broke all the rules and sat directly on the floor.   Stop being a bitter old hag, Jackie.  You’re only in your twenties.  Save the stifling of a younger generation for your thirties.

So I let them go.  

Five minutes in, my left ear had already been accosted by some of the worst obscenities in my vocabulary.  They were weighing in on what the movie was presenting versus what they imagined in the books, they were upset that Effie didn’t seem like they thought she would, and a variety of female characters had been likened to a slang term for a female’s genitalia.

I began to get upset.

I thought about the time I saw Alice in Wonderland in 3D and got so enraged at the girls who weren’t even making an attempt to use their inside voices in the front row that I walked over, crouched down behind their seats, and spat out that since they talked all the way through the movie, they could at least do me the favor of attempting a whisper for the rest.  I thought about the time I saw the silent film The Artist and a 60-year-old lady behind Dave and I read all the captions out loud.  (I still have scar marks from him taking out his tension by squeezing my leg instead of crushing her face.)  But above all, I thought about how they were seated where there weren’t even seats and by all counts should have already been ousted by an usher except by my good graces and my convincing myself not to be an old coot. And yet they sat there, carrying on.  

It was when Katniss finally got launched up the tube to the battlefield that I realized I could endure them no longer: something had to be done.  I didn’t devour all three books in the series and pull myself out into the wilderness of a midnight showing to have them banter and giggle through the most intense part of the movie.  No sir.  And honestly, I wasn’t sure that watching a movie focusing on taking the lives of adolescents was the best stimulus for me in my situation.

So I leaned over and abandoned my inside voice, saying  – Hey, do you think you guys could shut up for the rest of the movie? Seriously.  Thanks.

But there’s this amazing pretend shield that stupid kids think exists between you and their mockery of you.  The girl directly below me to my left was under such a delusion when she blatantly mimicked me to her friends.  There was some head bobbing, some finger wagging, and an exact replica of the tone I took with them.  

That’s when I called her a dick.

I did.  I just dropped all pretenses of good Christian behavior and called her a dick.  In fact, I called them all dicks and told them to shut the hell up.  Because if they didn’t, I was going to have an usher scrape them off the floor and shoo them to their lonely little islands – seats beside old people, fat people, ugly people, gruff people, and maybe even in the middle of rows.  They’d have to navigate it all in the dark by themselves.  And everyone would stare.  And call them dicks again.

They didn’t talk for the rest of the movie.

I darted out of there the moment it was over, annoyed that I’d ventured out into society again.  I thought about how they’d all pile into their mothers’ cars and talk about the old lady that nagged them and called them names.  They’d leave out the part where they were using worse language than me even though they’re half my age.  They’d leave out the part where I already told them to zip it before I unleashed the Richard on them.  They’d leave out the part where they encompass everything The Lorax tried to prevent in the previews.

I burned with a fiery rage, kicking myself for paying 10 dollars to see something I could have rented on Netflix in a few months and watched in the comfort of my own home, where I’m safe from society and all the ways it makes me want to cuss and commit crimes.  I’ve told myself so many times that I’m done going out to the movies for this very reason.  I just haven’t come up with a good system yet where every time I’m tempted to go see something on the big screen, I have the better sense to punch myself in the face instead.

Maybe I should just start a service where for a free movie ticket, I will sit on a stool near the exit of the theater and if my ears or eyes are offended by the presence of anyone in particular, I walk up and deliver one solid slam in the jugular.  I get a free movie, people get a better theatrical experience, and audiences begin to be respectful out of fear.

Sounds more effective than the Lorax campaign to me. ♣

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Can’t Post; Must Read Hunger Games

21 Mar

It all started when I innocently Tweeted that The Hunger Games seemed like The Running Man or our generation.  (Hashtag JenniferLawrenceIsArnold.)

The Running Man, in case you are unaware, is a movie featuring protagonists in fantastically 80’s spandex suits, a man-made obstacle course where no one really comes out alive, and a host of villains that are crosses between pro wrestlers and science experiments.  Even if you aren’t familiar with it, you’re probably familiar with the famous Schwarzenegger phrase that was born from it: “I’ll be back”. 

The spandex unitard he’s sporting when he says it really drives the threat home.

This tweet automatically posted to The Jackie Blog Facebook page, where two Hunger Games fans immediately chimed in that I should read the books.  Typically when a post gets more than one reaction in less than a minute, it’s going to grow out of control.  And before I had a litter of Hunger Gamelings on me, I decided to calm the storm by suggesting that if they watched The Running Man, I would read The Hunger Games.

Challenge accepted.

I didn’t really want to read The Hunger Games.  I like to judge things before I have any idea what they’re about.  Sometimes I’m wrong, but I really only remember the times that I was right.  Like Twilight.  

But nothing can possibly be as horrendous as Twilight and I also thought reading The Hunger Games would make a pretty good Lollipop Tuesday.  If you don’t know what that is, there’s a link at the top of the page that will help you.  You can come back when you’re in the know and be all like “oh, I know what that is.  I’m so hip”. 

Anyway, I always say that I should read popular books before seeing the movie version of them.  I don’t ever actually do it, though.  Does anyone, really?  I started reading Harry Potter back before the first movie came out but then I figured it’s so long and the movie’s coming out soon so why bother.

I’m not big on reading, apparently.

But this time I was going to commit.  It’s 2012.  I’m a committer in 2012.  So I downloaded The Hunger Games Book I and went at it.  It’s young adult literature so you feel like a genius reading it.  It goes so quickly you get an ego boost just devouring the thing.  That, and it’s freaking fantastic.

No seriously.  It’s really good.  And I don’t usually like things.  Anything, really.  In fact, I’d say my trademark is that I’m just generally not a fan of things.  But a quick read about a tense political landscape that ultimately pits adolescents against each other in a grueling, descriptive fight to the death?  

That’s pretty awesome.

I finished the first book in 2 days.  Pretty much everyone who reads it says that like it’s an accomplishment or it’s supposed to blow your mind or something.  And while it’s a bit of a testament to how gripping the story is, it’s also a testament to just being literate.  It’s not like there were any challenging words.  Which is good because you need all the brainpower to imagine the brutal slayings. I’d have finished it sooner if I didn’t have to do things ever.  I actually started to get annoyed that I had to shower and brush my teeth because there was no way to read The Hunger Games while I was doing those things.  It’s probably best that I downloaded a digital version because I’m pretty sure I’d have attempted to take a book into the shower with me.  Slowly, everything I did was just something I was doing until I could read again. When I’d walk outside, I’d look around at the trees and sidewalks and think of how foreign they seemed.  My brain was on the ground in the Games. There were supposed to be people trying to kill me everywhere.  My Orthodox Jewish neighborhood seemed safe.  

Too safe.

At work, I got annoyed when the phone rang.  Well, I kind of always get annoyed when the phone rings because there’s usually a human on the other end who’s about to astound me with their idiocy and put another dent in my faith in the human race.  But this time I was getting annoyed because they were pulling me out of my daydreaming about The Hunger Games.  I had to remind myself that I could just hang in a few more hours, I could get home and keep reading.  It would be like a reward for working and pretending to be an adult.

My face has been stuck like this since I started reading. Just stare for a while. Right into the pupils. That's exactly what it's like, man.

Needless to say, I plowed through Book II when I got home today.  Our neighbors came over and asked us to dinner and while it’s usually hard to get me to go anywhere or do anything, it’s particularly difficult when I’m nursing an addiction.  I may not like much, but the things I like, I like fiercely.  I had to go to dinner so that Dave wouldn’t break up with me.  After all, he was with me through the World of Warcraft withdrawal of 2009 and I feared he was starting to see the beginning signs of a dealbreaker in me.  So I went, I ate, I came home, I read.

I read even though I had to post.  I read without shame.  I ate every digital page up with my eyes and packed it into my cerebrum with such elation that I was sure that if I could just keep reading forever, I wouldn’t need to sleep, shower, or eat again.

Katniss doesn’t need to.

But then I realized I’ve got some new eyes in my blog following this week.  Quite a few, actually.  I don’t know where you’re all coming from, but welcome to the gooey insides of my brains.   Right now most of my brains are full of political rebellion, starving families, and children murdering other children.   It’s awesome.   And I’d love to tell you all about it but I have to go download and devour Book III.  Tonight.  It must happen tonight right now right this very moment.  I also have to look into a new Lollipop Tuesday idea because I just blabbered this one all out without waiting until Tuesday.  

After that I should probably check in with my Running Man readers- the ones who started this dangerous spiral. I still stand by my tweet, but I’m pretty sure they got the raw end of the deal as far as entertainment value goes and I’d like to devote a bit of time to laughing about it. 

But first: back to the Games. ♣

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I Should Have Been a Cat

14 Mar

It would be nice if everyone could just stop being so super awesome and successful at everything for just a gosh golly minute so I can gather myself and catch up.

Don’t you feel like you’re constantly being bombarded with news of other peoples’ awesomeness?  I do.  And it’s usually people my age being awesome.

Do you know who topped the Forbes list as the number one highest paid musician in the world?

Taylor Swift.

That’s right: the Swifty.  A girl about my age who picked up a guitar and started writing mediocre love songs is a billionaire and topped the Forbes List over a band like U2.   Or how about the Olsen twins?  Two chicks also about my age who are billionaires, icons, and own their own fashion line.  Or how about Lindsay Lohan?  Also my age, except unlike Swifty or the twins, she now makes money for being so awful at things.  

And for taking off her clothes and getting wasted and whatnot, but you catch my drift here.

In fact, some of you may recall my campaign to host SNL over The Lohan, wherein I compiled a list of reasons I would be a better host than her.  And you know what? I was right.  I would have been a better host.  But it doesn’t matter.  Because in spite of the awful reaction she got from people all over America when she hosted, her episode had the 2nd highest ratings of the SNL season.  She’s so successful at being unsuccessful that she’s successful.

How can I possibly compete with that?

I shouldn’t care, but I kind of do.  After all, how can I see list after list of people who are in their 20’s shooting into stardom because they made a Ryan Goseling tumblr or a site featuring cats who spell things improperly, or a page that documents what students say on hiking trails without somehow feeling like I’m missing some great calling to create something stupid and phenomenal that whips me into an Internet sensation? 

This cat sleeps for almost the entire day and is still currently more famous than me.

I blame the Twitter Machine.  It’s feeding me information so quickly about people who are young and fabulous and full of society-altering ideas and thoughts and it makes folks like me feel like they’re at the back of the herd.   I’m the limping, cross-eyed zebra of the magical Interwebz, where young, blossoming starlets and dashing entrepreneurs are tweeting the view from the front of the pack. 

I should probably just disconnect.  How can I possibly feel like I’m accomplishing anything when Twitter is throwing top 10 lists of awesome possums at me and Facebook is constantly updating with engagements, marriages, house/car/pet/job acquisitions, and (Lord help us) creepy sonogram photos?   When the world is constantly shouting at you the things that others are doing that are perfect and lovely, it can be hard to remember that we’re not all going after the same things and it’s okay to not be an OlsenLohanSwifty.

We just have to remember that we’re all on different paths.  Mine is to have a blog where I talk about how I don’t like to do laundry so sometimes I just buy packs of underwear instead.  Or how people leaving long voicemails makes me want to scoop my eyes out with a melon baller.  Or how life is too short to get nervous about pooping in public restrooms.   And while that’s not as profitable as a celebrity fragrance line or a TMZ headline or penning young chick country songs, it serves a noble purpose that only I can serve.

Because somewhere out there, someone has lots of packs of new underwear, a hamper full of dirty clothes, and reads my blog to feel better about it.

Keep on keepin’ on, person somewhere out there.  You’re doing just fine. ♣

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Warning: Online Dating Profiles May Lead to Flirt Messages from Your Dad

7 Mar

Well, guys who are old enough to be your dad, anyway.

As it turns out, I’m the world’s most recent member of MarriageMindedPeopleMeet.com.

The site is exactly what it sounds like and no, I’m not a willing participant.  My doppelganger signed me up.  You know, the one from California? I wrote about her some time ago.  Her name is also Jackie and her email address is separated from mine thanks to only one tiny, almost-indistinguishable period between her first and middle name.  And every time her classmates, favorite stores, and organizations overlook that tiny, important dot, I get sucked into her world.

She’s basically everything I might be in another plane of existence.  She’s from California, where my parents used to live.  She likes to hike and bike and accomplish various outdoor feats, the majority of which have confirmation numbers associated with them and are sent to me.  I can’t tell if she teaches or is just in grad school; I just know that one time I was sent an email asking for that day’s class materials to be resent.  She’s a class-attending, surfing, active California girl – the opposite of my pale, Central Pennsylvanian roots.  We’re two diverging shoots from the same name seed…I’m also in a steady relationship and she clearly is not.

It started with the account confirmation email.  I threw it in my Spam folder thinking it was just another runaway email intended for her but the correspondences kept coming.  My profile had been successfully set up, my matches were ready for review, and then suddenly: I had a New Flirt Message.

This is how I feel when I see I have a New Flirt Message

Since I already know so much about my doppelganger, I figured I might as well take the opportunity before I unsubscribe to see the sort of preferences she had locked in for herself.  I opened the email to find the faces of men in their 50’s with salt and pepper hair staring back at me, looking for love.  Her/my username? “Beachgirl” with some numbers behind it.

Figures.

The entire experience has been rather traumatizing.  Not just because the unsubscribe link sent me to the fifth circle of hell where I had to log in before I was allowed to unsubscribe, but also because 50’s men with salt and pepper hair is a category my own (married) father falls into.  And every day I’ve been receiving Flirt Messages from a group of fellows who could pass for his inner circle.  Their little internet portraits are lined up in a row and they’re all staring at me with lonely, wanton eyes. 

Of course like most oddities that cross my path, I considered leveraging it for the blog.  There were a variety of inappropriate uses that I mulled over, including a sidebar widget with my most recent matches.  Or the option of allowing my readers to fill out my profile and choose my picture. 

But I have limits, people, and fake-flirting with men twice my age in order to entertain my reader base is apparently one of them. 

Of course, poor Jackie California is over on the West Coast trying desperately to connect with this group of square-faced beady-eyed men and wondering why no one is flirting back with her.  And while I’m kind of quietly satisfied at this because she has failed to change her email address or to indicate to her contacts that the dot in its middle is crucial to delivery success in spite of my notifying her of my email interceptions, I’m also hoping she’s not taking it to heart that no one is getting back to her.  After all, she works out.  And tans.  And lives the good life we see on t-shirts in verse form.   I’m sure she’s lovely-looking for a middle-aged stubborn woman.

So if you’re out there and listening, Jackie California, know that this has nothing to do with you and everything to do with me not being into my dad.  One day, I hope you’ll understand. 

Until then, let’s finally change that email address of yours, hmm?  I’m not really the Stranger Danger type and These Flirt Messages are starting to give me panic attacks. ♣

P.S.  The Lohan hosted SNL on Saturday.  She got the 2nd highest ratings of the current season but also got some of the worst feedback of the season.  Apparently, a lot of people tuned in to see her fail.  Lesson learned: when seeking fame, one should just as well abandoning attempts to be awesome and begin attempts to famously suck. 

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Where’s My Fat Loss Hallelujah?

29 Feb

I really thought that when I reached my goal weight, it would be a little more like Jennifer Hudson with singing and magical fairies of fat loss and a little less oh, I don’t know – ordinary?

Mind you, I know not whether I’ve actually reached my goal weight.   It’s just that I’ve been jogging 2-3 times a week for about 5 months and I’m eating better and since I used to have macaroni and cheese and cheeseburgers twice a week and sat on my very cushioned tush every single day before that, logic dictates that I must have lost something. …Right?

The whole weighing-myself thing wasn’t going very well so I ditched it;  now I have The Naked System.  Instead of weighing myself, now I just stare at my pudge in the mirror every day.  I pinch it, I cradle it, I inspect it from all sides, and in the process determine my accomplishments.  If I’m overly soft, I get more motivated to eat and jog that day.  If I’m proud of myself, I decide it’s because I’ve been having pudgy naked time in the mirror every day and it’s working.  And if I stay the same, well, that’s because I check every single day and change is slow.

So I don’t have a number on the scale I’m looking for because I won’t let myself look.  I just know that 5 months ago I could take all the stomach fat in my hands and hold it in front of my body.  I was so married to it that I had considered a variety of Jackie Blog marketing tactics including a muppet, a voice, a variety show… But now the Pudge Muppet is gone.  I have forced my body to run against its will. It’s been months of jogging and eating better and having pudgy naked time and now when I wear my pants the second time after a wash, they scoot down my hips.

Photo borrowed from the magical fat fairy celebration parade.

I thought that was the sign.  I thought something epic like pants scooting down hips meant that  a fat version of me would burst out of the closet singing about the woman I used to be.  Then I could endorse a food establishment of my choosing and get a book deal and go on talk shows discussing the secret to how I changed my entire life and have nothing more important in my character than my ability to be fit.  Maybe I could even get my own google doodle.  (The o’s would obviously compose my former marshmallowy bottom).

But I even put on my skinny jeans the other day and there was no doppelganger bursting forth from the closet to sing a duet with me.  It was just me, singing in the mirror.  Naked.

It’s times like those that I’m glad my cats can’t talk.

I had sincerely hoped that by now people would start to notice, but the only one who’s said anything at all is the cleaning lady at work.  Either she’s  just trying to make me feel better or she’s the only one who I encounter in my daily life.  Neither is a preferable truth.

Maybe the change has to be more drastic.  Maybe I just need to get some better fitting clothes instead of walking around in my former fat suits.  Or maybe Angelina Jolie’s emaciated limbs at the Oscars made it impossible for anyone to look worthy of a fat loss hallelujah session.

I should probably just call JHud myself and see what it is that made her former fatty burst forth in vocal glory.   I want my nationally televised self-duet.

Until then, I’ll just keep rehearsing in the mirror. ♣

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Blue Ribbon Macaroni and Cheese

28 Feb

 

Did you think Lollipop Tuesdays had died?

They haven’t.  If you’re confused about why Lollipop Tuesdays aren’t every Tuesday anymore (or for that matter, why I don’t post every day), or you don’t even know what a Lollipop Tuesday is, you should probably check out the handy dandy “What’s Lollipop Tuesday?” header at the top of this page.  Now relax and strap in.  Because this week I entered a recipe contest.

As a homegrown mountain gal from Central Pennsyltucky, I felt like even though I’d never entered a cooking contest before, I could at least avoid embarrassing myself.  After all, when you’re raised in the roots cooking is just one part of a three-part formula for the perfect wife that some crazy hermit made up decades ago and is still being widely circulated in small towns with forks in roads: cooking, cleaning, baby-raisin’.  Hunting is optional.  I only ever really took to the cooking.

It also just so happened that the recipe contest was for Macaroni and Cheese, which was convenient since I just had my own Jackie Blog hunt for the Best Macaroni and Cheese in the Universe in December.  So I threw together my favorite parts of my favorite recipes and came up with a Jackie Blog concoction of cheesy awesomey goodness.

I wasn’t really sure what the rules were.  I went online and registered but I didn’t really get anything saying it was received and no one ever sent me criteria.  I didn’t even know what the prizes were.  I just knew that I had to cook up a vat of smokin’ hot mac and smack and take it to the venue by 1pm.  So I designated Dave my Transportation Manager, who threw me and my casserole in the car at 12:40pm and dropped us off while he parked.  With only 5 minutes until the entry deadline, I willed the elevator down with my mind, scurried into the judging room and plopped my casserole down: Entry #11.   It was precisely 1:00pm.

We then proceeded to wait ten full minutes for any late arrivals.    My tale of down-to-the-wire shenanigans weren’t quite as epic as I’d hoped.

Finally, it was time to begin.  We met the judges: 2 owners of 2 prominent food businesses in the city and 1 genuine lover of pasta smothered in cheese.  We also heard the judging criteria: appearance, taste, and-I-have-no-idea-what-else-because-I-was-stuck-on-appearance.

Appearance.

How could I have watched Iron Chef so many times and not have anticipated this as a determining factor?  I should have had a custom-built shelf above my dish that had three beautifully-prepared plates with perfect Macaroni and Cheese portions specifically for the judges.  They should have had firecrackers shooting out of them and have some sort of beautiful font displaying the name of my creation.

But I didn’t.  In fact, I didn’t even remember to bring a serving spoon.   And as my eyes stretched down the rows of the competitors, I saw beautiful thermal Pampered Chef totes, shiny and new casserole dishes that had fancy lids, and classic foil holders with wired burners beneath them.

I had my mother’s hand-me-down casserole dish that she let me borrow once when I was in college and I never returned.

At first I was nervous.  I didn’t consider appearance at all.  And what were the judges supposed to do without a serving spoon: paw it out of the cheesy vat with their bare mits?  Yes.  I decided yes they would.  In fact, I decided that casseroles should only be served in secondhand stolen dishes and reminded myself that I was there to write a blog post, not to impress judges.

Still, I was nervous.  I know this because when the first judge approached my dish and began to fish out a taste of the pasta with her pathetic plastic spoon, I winced as she lost the battle to the broiled parmesan and bread crumb finish, which was settled happily on the top of my concoction.  I grabbed Dave’s arm and clenched it hard as a huge piece of parmesan hung on her spoon and she had to contort her tongue to lap it into her hungry mouth.  I analyzed every nod, every dart of the eyes, every stroke of the pencil on paper.

I had lost.  I surely had  lost.

Dave laughed as my sanity slowly unraveled before him and tried to distract me with Bejeweled on his iPad.  I was sure to pause the game each time a judge approached my dish.   When the judges were finished testing, the audience was allowed to serve themselves buffet style.  I watched to see who took bites of mine and was disappointed when I saw much of my dish remained by the time I reached it.  I returned to my seat and saw a flyer that had been placed in my absence: it was an advertisement for a catering company.

…I was competing against catering companies?

I had talked myself into a deep, dark loss when one fellow jumped up and B-lined to my dish to get himself a hefty helping of seconds.  I was so happy I almost squealed like a freshly born piglet.  I had my victory: someone wanted seconds.  I told myself perhaps I would jest for third place.  That’s when the judges returned and announced there was a tie for first and second and they needed to retaste the top dishes to determine the tie-breaker.   The host of the event promptly walked over and grabbed my mother’s hand-me-down dish.

I freaked.

I freaked so hard that I had little tiny tears in my eyes.  I tried to hold back the excitement from my body but I only bottled it up and shot it out of my eyes like laser beams at poor supportive Dave, who feared me a serial killer and tried to coax the crazy out of my pupils.  It was me versus the Pampered Chef Super Awesome Casserole Tote.  I was so thrilled to have third place locked up.

After what felt like hours of the judges lobbing around more cheesy goodness in their mouths, a winner had finally been determined.

It was me.

I was so surprised to be announced first place that I let out a sort of strange yip in front of everyone and tried to tone it down for a casual walk up to the front to claim my winnings: a gift card and a certificate, deeming my recipe officially award-winning.  The judges looked pleased with the cheesiness I bestowed upon them and the audience all got in line to finish up what was left of casserole #11.

I waited for everyone to get their fill, truly amazed that I had just shown up for a Lollipop Tuesday and taken the top prize from a room full of hopefuls.  I felt like an imposter.  If only they knew it was all for a post.

On the way out of the venue, I called my mom to thank her for raising me right and Dave got a hot dog at the stand outside.  The fella inside asked who won and I said I did.   He asked me what the story was behind it and I explained Lollipop Tuesdays to him and that I run a blog but it’s nowhere close to a food blog.  He seemed pleasantly surprised and for indulging me and acting like he would tune in to read, I tipped him a dollar on the hot dog.

Sometimes you have to pay for publicity.

That night I sat around basking in the phrase “Award Winning”.   I referred to myself as an award-winning cook and my macaroni and cheese as a first-place dish.  And just then I remembered telling my coworkers I was entering a recipe contest that weekend and being laughed at by someone.  They made a joke about Kraft mac and cheese and said I was too young to cook well. I told her she didn’t know the power of being raised in the sticks.

And just then, I took out  my phone to send a proper foot-in-mouth-inducing text.

“Boo yah.”

Signed, First Place Chef. ♣

Before you ask, here’s the recipe.  Thanks to thesinglecell, who provided most of the recipe for thejackieblog recipe contest:
 
1/2 lb pasta of your choice, cooked and drained
2 tablespoons butter, divided
2 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons dry mustard
5 oz. sharp cheddar, shredded
3 oz. Raclette, cubed
1/4c. Parmesan, grated (plus some for sprinkling)
1 3/4c. heavy cream
3/4c. milk
Paprika for sprinkling
Cinnamon for sprinkling
1 cup white bread crumbs cut into 1/2 in. squares
 
Preheat oven to 375. Spray a 9×9″ pan (preferably a hand-me-down) with cooking spray. Pour al dente, drained pasta into 9×9″ pan. Melt 1tbs butter and pour over bread crumbs.  Set aside.  Blend flour, mustard and salt together in a small bowl. In a saucepan over medium-low heat, melt 1tbs butter. Add flour, salt and mustard and stir until blended. Add milk and cream, stirring or whisking until dry ingredients are dissolved and liquid is hot, but not boiling. Add Raclette, stirring/whisking occasionally until cheese melts. Repeat for cheddar and Parmesan, stirring/whisking often so the cheese doesn’t stick to the bottom and burn.  Sprinkle in cinnamon.
 
Pour cheese sauce over pasta; add bread crumbs and sprinkle with Parmesan and paprika and bake at 375 for 25 minutes. Then broil until top is golden.
 
Eat with bare hands.

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Why I Should Host SNL Instead of Lindsay Lohan

22 Feb

I’m launching a campaign to host Saturday Night Live instead of Lindsay Lohan.

I feel strongly about this.  I thought hosting SNL was supposed to be a sign that you were relevant and that people wanted to see you.  On occasion, it’s also a tip of the hat to your ability to roll with a gag – to think on your feet – to be, oh, I don’t know- entertaining.  And though I’m really excited about how SNL seems to be pumping out some good stuff lately, I’m pretty disappointed in the choice to let The Lohan host.  Sure, she has a great rack.  And she’s been in movies an attempted a singing career and is now an official Playboy model.  And she’s hosted a bunch of times already.  And she generates more interest in what she wears to court hearings than I do in a well-thought out, carefully constructed blog post. 

But I was improv captain in college, folks.  And if I wear two bras and shove some padding on the lower inside of my bubblie wubblies, I can give the Lohan a serious run for her money.

All she had to do was beg and now she gets the coveted honor of hosting the coolest show on television.  It doesn’t matter that she’s not relevant or that the last time she showed up in public she looked like a bleached Oompa Loompa trapped in a straitjacket.  So if she can flush her celebrity life and hotness down the toilet, follow it up with a bunch of trashy appearances and questionable outings, and then beg to host and get granted her wish, I’m pretty sure I can lock this in with the old-fashioned method of straightforward bullets-by-numbers and overwhelming persistence.  Let’s do this.

Why I Should Host SNL Instead of Lindsay Lohan

  1. I have a proven track record of creating original content.  2011 was the year of The Jackie Blog post-a-day.  And I whooped it.  Hard.  
  2. I don’t think SNL has ever let a humor blogger host and it would be a great way to engage the Internet community and give young, semi-humorous indie bloggers everywhere a senseless feeling of hope.
  3.  I have a fiercely loyal following who would support my endeavor and tune in to reap the benefits of their fandom.
  4. “I Know Who Killed Me”  It’s a movie.  It’s bad.  And I didn’t tie myself for the Razzie Worst Actress  award in it; The Lohan did.
  5. My teacher told me I could do anything I wanted to do when I grew up and I’m grown now and I want to host SNL.  This is America, folks.  
  6. My day job is being Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada and this is my only hope to scrape together what remains of my soul before the rest of it is sucked away by Miranda Priestly and the Corporate Machine (which also happens to be a great band name).
  7. 8., 9., and 10.   
 
 
 
So this is the plan: I’m going to send out good thoughts into the great Internet nether and hope that the SNL gods hear my cry.  If that doesn’t work, I’m going to resort to old school mailings.  They’ll feature a hard copy of a blog post from 2011 and a reader endorsement Sharpied on a picture of The Lohan’s face.  You can go ahead and drop me a line in the comments if you want to sponsor a Lohan-face-note.
 
I’m not sure if that will get me an invitation to New York or a restraining order, but I’m willing to risk it.
 
I need to work fast and furiously.  Lindsay Lohan hosts on March 3rd.  That doesn’t give me much time.
 
Then again if this doesn’t work, I could just start lobbying now for her next comeback. ♣

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Please Don’t Make Me Shop

15 Feb

A carefully constructed Hell.

Clothes shopping is the worst.

It makes me angsty in all the normal ways, of course.  All the body-related ways.  I spend a lot of time looking at a garment and wondering how I’ll fit all my jiggly into it.  I do a lot of fatty math – things like “if I get a pair of pants that go really high and a blouse that goes really low, how much pressure per inch does it take for my muffin top to disappear into the nether?’

For the record, I’m still running.  That’s right.  I graduated from Couch to 5K and now I run.  Now it’s just something I do.  I don’t want to talk about it too much because I’m afraid I’ll scare it off.  Like the dodo birds.   But it takes a lot of running to undo the terrible wrongs that are hanging on my hips and when I’m encasing them in clothing, it’s really more a matter of trying to find what doesn’t make me look incredibly awful instead of what makes me look incredibly good.   I have special, nonspecific equations that have to do with the original cost of a garment vs. its clearance cost and how large that number has to be for me to convince myself that it doesn’t matter if I look fat in it.

But those are everywoman things.  The tip of the clothes shopping iceberg, if you will.  Even a casual jaunt through Macy’s gives me palpitations.  This past weekend I went to Nordstrom (yes, I had a gift card, and no I don’t make money off this blog) and quadrupled the Macys effect.  All the sales people were super attentive.  I don’t know where the people are in life who enjoy that.  Who goes shopping and hopes that an associate will ask them if they’re finding everything okay? Not me.  Even if I’m looking for something, I’ll wander around pretending to look at things that I don’t pertain to me at all until I can spot what I need in my peripherals. 

I lead a complicated existence.

I worry a lot about the unspoken rules.  Clothing stores don’t all use the same standards so there’s a gamut of things I have to figure out when I go to a new place.  Do I have to ask for a fitting room or are they unlocked? Do I have hunt someone down or will someone be back there waiting?  Is there someone to help me when I need a new color of the mediocre shirt that I’m hoping doesn’t make me look as fat in black, or do I have to get out of my naked suit and go find it myself?  Do they write my name on the back of the door, do they need me to take a number matching the number of garments I have, should I button and zip everything back up when I’m done? And of course the most angst-inducing: do I leave the clothes in the fitting room or do I put them on a rack outside the fitting room? 

Sometimes the rack has things on it that don’t look like fitting room rejects.  And if I’m not invited to do so, or if there’s no rack at all (bewildering), I have absolutely no idea what to do and to avoid being a self-entitled jerkwad of a person, I take my monstrous heap of rejected clothing back out to the sales floor and put each one back to its rightful home.

Most of what I do in life is motivated by self-imposed guilt.

Because I so often have to carry out the latter practice, shopping requires me to be quite sharp minded.  I can’t just wander in there without purpose or I won’t remember where I got clothing from, won’t intuitively catch on to the wardrobe practices, and may risk being scolded by store personnel for a clothing store faux pas.

Nordstrom has an added sense of danger for me.  Things in that store can be so expensive that they send folks who were raised poor like me to the hospital.  I used to go in there when I was young and play “guess how much this costs” with my friends.   Now that it’s not a game and I actually want to buy some of these things (remember the gift card.  And the fact that there are still clearance sales at Nordstrom) I have to be seriously careful about my public reactions to such atrocities.  One blouse I pick up could be $80, on sale for $40.  The next could be $1200.  The real challenge in that situation is to, of course, not pull the blouse downward when your torso wrenches to the floor in disbelief, thereby making the entire rack of clothes topple over.

After an hour and a half of panic-attack-inducing shopping, I finally wandered out of Nordstrom and into the great white light beyond the mall doors.  By the time I made it out, I had tried on about 40 different things and only bought three.  With no reject rack in sight and far too many clothes to wander out of the dressing room with to return to their homelands, I left about 25 in one fitting room and then went to the complete other side of the store to try on anything else I found.  I thought that by leaving half on one side and half of the other, the sales associates would split their contempt for me down the middle.  I was exhausted, and rightfully so: all that salesperson dodging, fitting room hiding, and body fat encasing is quite the chore.

From now on: online shopping.  My fitting room, my rules, and no one asking me if I’m finding everything okay.  Just a couple of cats awkwardly staring at my jiggle and a box with a return slip ready to be shipped. ♣

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The Thrills of Adulthood Part III: Dental Appointments

8 Feb
This post is part of an accidental series I apparently have, entitled “The Thrills of Adulthood”.  Check out previous versions here- The Thrills of Adulthood and The Thrills of Adulthood Part II: My Palace of Filth. 

Those are the eyes of a man you can almost trust.

I started this morning off swimmingly, with a trip to the dentist.  Let’s call him Ned.

My first in six years, folks.  I’m not ashamed to say it.  Listen: that crap’s expensive.  On the list of things to pay for as a young, struggling, adult larva, having a middle aged white guy scratch at my enamel with a metal hook and give me a live demonstration on how to pull string through my teeth isn’t at the top of them.  It’s not that I don’t think it’s important.  It’ s just that when you peer inside the wallet of a mid 20-something, you don’t find much.  All of it has already been wrestled out of our grimy little clenched fists for things we never knew we had to pay for before.  Like car insurance and oil changes and work clothes and groceries and appliances.  Some of my most sobering moments in life have been those in which I have to purchase something that is absolutely unexciting but necessary to higher adult functions.  Like kitchen sponges.  Or batteries.  Or a brand new shiny set of car tires, when I’d rather spend that money on an iPad.  Or a kiddie pool full of long noodles.

Yesterday Dave bought a new white board for us and I convinced myself that it was the most romantic thing that had happened to me in our entire relationship.  I cried.  There were real tears.

Anyway, adulthood is expensive.  And I haven’t even started to have babies yet.  Lord help me.

So I’m sitting in Ned’s dentist chair, trying to figure out what I’m supposed to infer from his handing me a cup of water and holding a funnel beside me (it’s not really intuitive, folks), when he begins to make me feel like a terrible person.  He starts to tell me how people die from bad teeth, how it’s linked to many diseases and deaths, and that he’d like to talk to me about my process.  All this in spite of the fact that I didn’t have a single cavity or much plaque to speak of.

My brother got me an electric tooth brush for Christmas (also a clear indicator of adulthood).  I expected him to give me a certificate or something.  I guess they only do that for kids, which I think it preposterous. Excitement over receiving certificates knows no age limit.

So then the Nedster starts going on about how the real goal after I eat should be to get rid of any of the food that’s left in my mouth.  You know, the little bits and pieces you savor as they swim around for a bit.  He believed that every time I put something in my mouth, drink included, I should then rinse or brush whatever is remaining away.   In fact, he so believed that this was necessary to my dental hygiene that he said I should steer clear of any “hard to clean foods” like cookies.

He went straight for the cookies.  Heartless.

Oreos, he said, are the worst.  Because even if you rinse afterward, you only get about half of it.

I can tell you right now, I’m not going to do that.  Get all the food out of my mouth after I’m done?  What about aftertaste, Ned? What about relishing? What about the sweet satisfaction after you’ve had a nice portion of something you’ve been craving for a long time.  What, am I just supposed to sprint and brush away the satisfaction? Good God, man – don’t you have a heart?!

I ate a small Dove chocolate square about ten minutes ago and my tongue can still remember the silky milk goodness on its surface.

But then I realized he’s playing a trick on me.  He probably loves Oreos.  If I would have looked closer, I might have even found a few crumbs lingering on his eye teeth.  But he’s realized that telling people to floss just isn’t working.  People will always do ever so slightly less than they really feel they should.  So he’s decided to change the game and tell people to do more.  If I’m busy feeling unhygienic and sad because I’m not rinsing and brushing after every snack, I’ll tell myself that I should at least floss.  I mean, I’m already slacking in the rinses – I don’t want to risk death because I also didn’t floss, do I?

I admire his wit.  I do.  I recognize this tactic from my childhood: asking to stay out until 10 because then I’ll get to stay out til 9 and all I really needed was 8? Yeah, I remember that. It’s very effective.  Nicely done, Ned! No wonder I bought your services instead of a pool full of noodles or 18 cases of chocolate milk that I’d have to brush away after drinking.

Speaking of which, I should probably go floss some of this Dove chocolate out of my mouth. ◊

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